


Twenty Things

by mad_martha



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Angst, Drama, F/M, Other, list!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-27
Updated: 2011-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-23 03:11:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/245651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of list-fics and short scenes relating to Ravenclaw Harry Potter and his family and friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Twenty Things About Harry Potter (Ravenclaw, 7th Year)

**Author's Note:**

> Back when I first posted "Checkmate" there was some discussion about different AUs I could write along similar lines. I had some ideas about a Ravenclaw Harry and his family and friends which wanted to develop but never quite did. Ergo, this isn't a story as such; rather, I ended up with three 'list-fics' and a series of short scenes. This format worked out all right on LiveJournal, but AO3 is a bit different, so I'm posting the whole thing here as one chaptered story - if you can call it a story when it never really got off the ground :-\

1:- Harry doesn't quite know how he ended up in Ravenclaw. What he _does_ know is why he didn't end up in Gryffindor, like his father. The Sorting Hat was all set to put him there but when it mentioned James Potter, Harry hesitated mentally just for a split second. That split second made all the difference to the Hat's decision.

2:- All the same, he knows he isn't exactly typical Ravenclaw material, although he does like to do well in his studies because that makes his mother Lily proud of him, and Harry is very close to his mother.

3:- He's less close to his famous father. James is captain of the England Quidditch team. He and Lily divorced when Harry was seven and Harry's lived with his mother ever since. Sometimes Harry thinks that the Sorting Hat put him in Ravenclaw because it knew he would get less attention there. Ravenclaws are less easily impressed by Quidditch players than the other Houses, and are more interested in how many points Harry can earn them.

4:- That said, his Housemates were less than impressed when such an obvious natural Quidditch player refused to try out for their team. His father doesn't understand it either, but Harry isn't about to explain to any of them that no matter how much he loves to fly, playing Quidditch is something he'd really rather not do, thanks.

5:- Instead, when he was twelve he started a kind of unofficial club for people who liked to fly but were either not very good at it or weren't good enough for the teams. They fly around the grounds and sometimes race, and that was where Harry met his friend Ron Weasley, a Hufflepuff. But Ron is another story.

6:- If Harry was the kind of person to get into fights, he would fight with his father all the time. Instead, James argues at Harry while Harry silently accepts his criticism. And he will never let James know how much it hurts him that his father can't accept him for what he is.

7:- Nor will he ever let him know how much it hurt that time when he was thirteen and having dinner in a Diagon Alley restaurant with his father, and a reporter from the _Daily Prophet_ approached them to ask James questions about a woman who claimed to have just given birth to his son. It hurts more that James refuses to this day to discuss it, although it came out later that he was paying her maintenance. Harry was harassed about it at school for weeks.

8:- But despite everything, Harry does love his charismatic and unpredictable father. He's dazzled, bewildered and frequently hurt by him, and none of that could happen if his father didn't matter to him. But James probably wouldn't understand any of that, so it's another thing Harry will never let him know.

9:- A lot of the contrary things Harry does are probably because he knows James won't like them. He doesn't admit that to himself even at the very back of his mind, because if he did he'd have to ask himself why he does it and he doesn't want to know the answer.

10:- He gets along better with James's closest friends. There are three of them: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. To be honest Harry isn't sure how they manage to _stay_ friends, as they don't seem to have much in common with each other and only meet up once every few months. But they shared a dormitory at school and this seems to have been enough. He probably gets along best, in everyday terms, with Remus Lupin who's a private tutor by profession and who has always been available to help his friend's son with the kind of knotty life problems that Harry can't broach with his mother and won't broach with his father.

11:- Harry quietly idolises Sirius Black though. Being independently wealthy, Sirius has spent much of his adult life doing things that involve adventuring in far countries, and Harry's always receiving owlcards, letters and parcels full of odd things from far-flung corners of the globe. Harry would very much like to follow Sirius's example when he leaves school.

12:- Professor Flitwick finds this ambition deeply frustrating in one of his star pupils. Adventuring is something Gryffindors do and the vagueness of it worries him. Clearly Harry has inherited one of his father's more inconvenient genes.

13: - In fact, it appears he's inherited more than one of them; Harry achieved the animagus transformation on his own only last year. It's not quite as good as James, who managed it with his friends at fifteen, but that's not the point in Harry's opinion. He hasn't told Professor Flitwick though. He hasn't told anyone yet, although he supposes he'll have to sometime.

14:- If he does tell anyone, the second person he'll tell will be Sirius Black. He knows Sirius will understand the freedom of being able to change shape, to briefly cast off human responsibilities and expectations, and experience life through different senses and from different perspectives.

15:- Harry's animagus form is a Barn Owl. It amuses him that last weekend, when he was sitting in the Owlery (listening to owl gossip, which is very high-brow stuff), Draco Malfoy came and asked him to take a letter to a woman at a certain establishment just off Diagon Alley. It was tempting to stop somewhere and read it, but he didn't. He didn't need to anyway, because the woman read it out to her friends before she gave Harry her very brief and dismissive reply for Draco.

16:- Harry doesn't like Draco Malfoy much. The Slytherin is a bully and a bad scholar who tends to disrupt classes when he's bored. He's not stupid but he's lazy and can't be bothered to apply himself. He's also the pupil who harasses Harry the most when James Potter does something that makes it into the newspapers.

17:- Nevertheless, Harry nearly always gets stuck with the prat when Charms papers are due, because Harry volunteered to help with extra tutoring two years ago and he's not allowed to pick and choose who he helps.

18:- Harry doesn't mind tutoring Ron Weasley though. He helps him with his Transfiguration homework too, because that's what friends are for. In fact, he'll probably tell Ron about his animagus form too, one day. Maybe when they've both left school.

19:- Something else Harry doesn't tell people about are the strange dreams he has about things that sometimes come true and the visions he sees in the mirror in the Ravenclaw common room when he's tired. This is why he didn't opt for Divination in third year even though he knows it would have annoyed his father almost as much as him taking Potions at NEWT level. Harry doesn't believe in Divination, thank you very much; as a Ravenclaw he knows that ninety-seven percent of prophecies are false, that the 'disciplines' involved are very _un_ disciplined, and everyone knows that Professor Trelawney is a fraud. All the same, he's not about to let her get her hands on him, just in case.

20:- Harry's mother tells him that no matter what he does, she'll always love him and be proud of him. She supports him in everything he does and that gives him the confidence to carry on being the person he is. He wants to tell her how much he loves and is proud of her too, but being a bloke that'll take a bit of working up to. All the same, when he tells someone about being an animagus, she will be the first.


	2. Twenty Things About Ron Weasley (A Hufflepuff)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Twenty things about a Hufflepuff Ron.

1:- Ron was quite small when he decided that he wasn't going to be like the rest of his family. Of course, he was helped in this decision by his older twin brothers telling him about how he was the only member of the family ever to be hatched from an egg in their mother's hen house.

2:- For a long time after that he thought he might sprout feathers and was actually rather disappointed when his mother told him that Fred and George had made it up. He'd been hoping to grow wings and fly.

3:- Chickens don't fly much though. This was Fred and George's explanation for why Ron found it so difficult to learn to fly on their brooms. Naturally, the fact that they trained their brooms to buck their little brother off has never been mentioned to him.

4:- Ron has always wanted a pet of his own - an owl, a cat, or he would even settle for a toad. Nevertheless, when his parents offered to buy him a rat just before he started school he refused. He hasn't forgotten that he had a puffskein called Custard when he was small and the twins killed it by using it as a bludger. His parents don't know that, though. When they noticed it was missing and asked where it was, Ron told them that he thought it had run away because he was too scared of Fred and George to tell the truth.

5:- He's still pretty scared of them, if the truth is known, but he hides it. And he's learned to stay well out of their way.

6:- Ron's first trip to Hogwarts was unusually exciting, for when he arrived at Platform 9 and 3/4 with his parents the captain of the England Quidditch Team, James Potter, was there to see his own son off for the first time. There was such a big crowd of people trying to get his autograph that Ron found himself pushed completely aside and he ended up standing in a corner of the platform next to another unnoticed small boy with messy black hair, green eyes and spectacles. He remembers they were halfway to Hogwarts before the boy admitted that he was Harry Potter.

7:- Ron quite thought that he was going to end up in Gryffindor, like most of his family (except for the twins, who were in Slytherin). The Sorting Hat had other ideas, though. They had a bit of a chat about it (such a nice, friendly voice the Hat had, not at all what he was expecting) and the Hat told Ron kindly that he rather thought he'd do better in Hufflepuff. It was a disappointment at first, but he settled in quite happily in no time at all.

8:- His favourite classes are Potions and Herbology. He's not bad at Charms either, but Transfiguration is a tough class for him and he knows he's a bit hopeless at History of Magic and Astronomy. And Defence Against The Dark Arts is a complete disaster, although that's mostly because Professor Snape has no patience with him.

9:- That said, since fifth year Ron has been doing better in both Charms and Transfiguration, because Harry Potter has been helping him as part of the Student Tutoring programme. He did well enough in his OWLs to take both subjects at NEWT level, although he still has to work very hard at them.

10:- He's also been doing quite well with his flying since third year. He'll never get on the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, but that's okay because it's more fun flying in races and informal games in Harry's Broomflight Club. No one in the group is a champion flyer (except, perhaps, Harry himself but that's another story) but it's not so much about competing as enjoying being on a broom. Ron loves to fly.

11:- Harry is Ron's best friend. It's quite unusual for people to strike up close friendships across Houses, but they shared chocolate frogs and confidences on that first train ride, and later they shared cauldrons and textbooks (Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs had a lot of classes together during their first and second years), and it's sort of carried on from there.

12:- Ron likes to think that he understands Harry. He knows what it's like to be the odd man, the misunderstood one in the family, after all. And while he doesn't have a clue what it's like to have a famous father, he does know what it's like to be measured against another family member's achievements, since it happens to him quite a lot. He'll never be Head Boy like Bill, or as popular as Charlie, or as clever as Percy, or as sneaky as the twins. He's not even the baby of the family anymore. He understands that Harry needs to find his own way of doing things, because Ron has to do that too.

13:- Ron's first kiss happened when he was fifteen and it was just before he caught the train home for Christmas. It was with Hannah Abbot and he remembers it being quite nice but, in retrospect, nothing to light fireworks over. Still, he was very glad when it happened because he'd been starting to think he might never get snogged. It didn't go any further, though, because he forgot to send her a Christmas card and she and her friends were furious with him for a month afterwards.

14:- His second kiss was far more satisfying, but he still thinks Anthony Goldstein was only using him as a substitute for someone more unattainable. But that's okay, because if Ron's honest with himself he was using Tony as a substitute too.

15:- Every time they snog - or do something else together - Tony makes a point of saying it's 'just friends', 'just practice' and 'there's nothing in it'. Ron never argues. How can he? For him it is _just_ friends and _just_ practice, and while there might be something in it, it's not because he fancies Tony. Besides, he understands Tony's fear. Ron's terrified of this secret being found out too.

16:- There are dreams and there are ambitions. Ron has many dreams, some of which are outright fantasies (finding or winning a large pile of Galleons and sweeping a Certain Person off his feet) and others which are much more humble (getting a reasonable job and a flat somewhere, and maybe - just maybe - admitting how he feels to a Certain Person). He never lets himself dream beyond that point, though. Because then he would have to entertain the possibility ( _probability_ ) of rejection and that would hurt too much.

17:- His ambitions are another matter. Much as he would like to imagine himself becoming an important potion master, earning fantastic sums of money, he accepts that his potion-making skills are merely good, not excellent. But he's very good at Herbology and he understands the properties and correct preparation of potions ingredients, so he's settled for the more modest ambition of becoming an apothecary. Professor Sprout thinks he has an excellent chance of getting an apprenticeship in this field.

18:- This doesn't stop his mother trying to push him towards a Ministry career. Ron isn't the confrontational type, although he'll fight his corner if he's forced to; mostly he lets his mother ramble on, says "hm" in all the right places, and carefully avoids committing himself to anything. It's an approach he learned from watching his father.

19:- Despite what he thinks, Molly Weasley _has_ noticed that her youngest son employs this trick. She never says anything about it, though, because she finds it oddly endearing that of all her children, Ron should be the one most like Arthur. But then, Molly notices a lot more about Ron than he will ever fully realise. Raising six other boys has given her time to refine her technique. She knows when he's happy, when he's sad, or when something is troubling him; she recognised the signs when he was being bullied by a couple of older Gryffindors and dropped a discreet owl to Professor Sprout about it, and she put what she hopes was the fear of Merlin into the twins when she realised they were doing the same. She would like him to take up a Ministry post because, like all mothers, she wants to see her son excel. But she won't make a fuss (well, not _much_ of a fuss) if he insists on doing something with less glory attached to it. She wants him to be happy; she's very afraid that he won't be if he can't get over his crush on his friend Harry Potter.

20:- Ron has always hoped that he'll have courage. In some things he knows he already has; he had the courage to be different, by being a Hufflepuff and happy about it, and he had the courage to strike up a friendship with the son of a famous Quidditch player in the face of other people calling him a suck-up. In other ways he feels he has probably failed; he's never had the nerve to tell that irritating Gryffindor know-it-all to shove her copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ where the sun doesn't shine, and he's never really been able to stand up to his brothers. But he thinks that in the things that really matter, he probably hasn't done too badly so far. The biggest test - making a future for himself - is yet to come, but as Harry sometimes says, the future is more of an ongoing project anyway and it's probably best to take it one little chunk at a time. Looking at it like that, Ron is hopeful.


	3. Three Untitled Moments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three random snippets from Ravenclaw Harry Potter's life.

Moment No. 1

The little cottage where Harry's mother lived would always be home to him, even though he spent most of his time at the Diagon Alley flat he shared with Ron. It was the middle of November now and the garden was looking rather ragged despite everything being neatly bedded down for the winter, and Harry felt the first brush of a light drizzle across his cheek as he hopped off his broom and stowed it in the shed. Sirius's motorbike was also in the shed, which made him grin as he crunched down the gravel pathway and rapped briskly on the kitchen door as he opened it.

He was expecting to find the pair of them drinking tea at the kitchen table, as was Lily Evans's custom unless she had 'proper' company. He was not expecting to find them in a heated clinch by the sink. They shot apart, shocked and dishevelled, and Harry was even more stunned that his usually cool and collected mother had to turn away for a moment to straighten her clothes.

For a split second he couldn't think, let alone say anything. Then:

"I'm sorry!" he squeaked, just as though his voice had never broken, and he backed hastily out of the door again.

Ten minutes later, Sirius (clothing all in place again) found Harry perched on an old stool in the greenhouse. In the meantime it had started to rain properly and the teenager had sought refuge there, although he looked not a whit less shocked.

"That's a relief," Sirius said awkwardly. "I thought you'd hie off for sure and I'd have to track you down."

"Um ..." Harry said helplessly.

"Not what you were expecting," Sirius said after a moment. He looked embarrassed. "I knew we should have told you before now, but there never seemed to be a good moment."

"Oh. This - this has been happening for a while then?"

For a moment it seemed like his godfather didn't know what to say. Then he sighed and nodded in a resigned sort of way.

"It ... started out as an occasional thing," he admitted. "But for the last six months - "

 _"Six months?"_ Harry's eyes were huge. "Why didn't I notice that?"

This brought a small grin to Sirius's face. "You've had a few things on your mind," he pointed out. "I'm surprised you've managed to surface at all with the schedule they have you on!"

"Yeah, but even so!" Harry looked thoroughly chagrined. "Good thing I didn't become an Auror, yeah? _The investigating officer was making a nice cup of tea at the time and missed two dozen suspicious individuals in hoods tap-dancing past his position. When the stunning hex was removed he reportedly said 'Cor blimey, guv'nor, I never saw that coming!'_ "

"I saw a headstone with something like that on it, once," Sirius offered, amused. "But look, Harry - are you all right with this? Me and your mum? I know it's a bit, um, unexpected but - "

"I don't mind," Harry said, a little surprised. "Well, I mean it's not even really my business, I suppose. It's just a bit of a surprise. I need to think about it a bit and get used to it. But ...."

"But?" Sirius prompted, more anxious than he liked to admit.

"Well, I'm sort of glad Mum has - well, you know. She doesn't say anything, but I think she's been really lonely sometimes. Since Dad left."

Sirius managed to keep the wry expression off his face, but it took an effort. James hadn't "left"; Lily had thrown him out. And the main reason Lily had been lonely over the years was because every friendship she'd struck up with another man had been ended by James, directly or indirectly. He was the worst dog in the manger Sirius had ever encountered. But Harry probably didn't know that and if he didn't know now he didn't need to find out, in Sirius's opinion. The teenager had a difficult enough relationship with his father, and Lily had always insisted that it would be wrong to prejudice him further by letting him know the degree to which James interfered in her life.

"I like to think I can do something about that," he said mildly.

Harry nodded, but gave him a curious look. "Does that mean you're staying in England now?"

"Certainly for the time being," Sirius said, smiling slightly.

"Good." Then Harry's expression changed. "Dad doesn't know, does he?"

Sirius drew in a deep breath. "Not yet, no."

"He'll go ballistic," Harry said frankly. "But I suppose you already know that."

"Better than you do, Harry, believe me." Sirius rubbed a hand over his goatee beard for a moment, then shrugged. "I'll deal with that when it happens. I suppose I'll have to tell Remus and Peter as well, at some point, but they'll keep a while longer."

"Remus won't mind. Knowing him, he's probably already guessed."

Sirius smiled. "True!"

"Um ... you might want to leave telling Peter until you've told Dad."

"That too is very true." Sirius already knew that Harry was far from stupid, but apparently he was far more observant than this incident suggested. Sirius was fond of Peter, but under no illusions about him; he was primarily _James's_ friend. Peter would go straight to James when he found out, guaranteed.

But Sirius had known from the first that this would be an unbelievably messy situation if - when - it came out. He loved James but was under no illusions about him either. This could split their four-way friendship straight down the middle, especially if James was enough of an ass to make Remus choose sides, and it could even end with a split between Harry and James too if things weren't _very_ carefully handled.

 

 ** Moment No. 2 **

"I love you, James, and believe me, that's the only thing that stops me hexing you into the middle of next week," Remus told him curtly. "You are the biggest, most ungrateful fool on God's earth, I swear! You're damned lucky that Sirius loves you too, you know. Any other man would have filed charges of assault against you with the MLE."

"A nice set of loyal friends I have!" James retorted angrily. "Did you know about this all along, then? Thought it'd be a good joke to keep it from me?"

"I knew nothing about it!" Remus said, his temper rising. "But if I had known, I'd certainly have thought twice about telling you, because I know what a jealous berk you are! What Lily's put up with from you over the years - "

"I wasn't the one who walked out!" James roared. "It was never my choice to get divorced - "

"I suppose you thought she'd just turn a blind eye to all your womanising? Or do you rationalise that to yourself somehow? I've always wondered with the way you behave!"

"Piss off, Moony! Just piss off!"

"Is that what you're going to say to Harry as well?"

James swung around furiously. "I like to think that my son has a bit more loyalty than my so-called mates!"

"So what you really want is for your son to ostracise his mother and godfather," Remus said coldly. "All to satisfy some warped sense of revenge you have!"

"How dare you - "

"Your wonderful, bright, handsome and loving son - who still loves _you_ , God knows why - is nineteen years old, James. He's not blind. He's not stupid. And he's not a little boy anymore. How you've avoided alienating him so far is beyond my comprehension, but don't let that fool you into thinking you can always avoid it. If you go your full length, you Bludger-brained idiot, he may just decide that he's taken as much crap from you as he can hold. And then you _will_ be sorry. Won't you?"

 

 ** Moment No. 3 **

Harry opened the door and nearly jumped out of his skin. "Dad!"

James looked wry. "Surprised to see me?"

"Well ... er ...."

"What do you think I'm going to do? Pitch a fit? Smash some furniture?" From the look on Harry's face, he probably did. James sighed and held up the magnum of champagne. "I can behave like a decent human being on occasion. Really."

"Everything all right, Harry?" Remus stepped into the passage and his brows went up. "Ah. James."

"Moony." James shifted under his friend's calmly assessing eyes, but held his ground. "I think Harry thinks I can't be trusted to behave myself. Any chance you could, ah, vouch for my good behaviour?"

There was a long pause as the two men looked at each other.

"It's not my house so I can hardly deny you entry," Remus said finally. "I'm sure if Harry lets you in you won't do anything to make him regret it - will you?"

"I know I'm a prat, but I don't think I'm a total ass," James said sourly.

"I'll reserve the right to answer that when you leave."

Harry stepped back mutely and James slowly stepped over the threshold.

"Thank you."

Then Sirius appeared in the sitting room doorway. "Where is everyone - ah. James."

James tried a smile at his son. "You may have noticed that the words _Ah James_ have replaced the more common _Hello_ in this part of the country."

"Well," Sirius said, with a certain forced lightness. "All we need is Peter and it'll be a near re-run of nineteen years ago."

"Isn't he here? I thought he might be."

"The night is young," Remus murmured and James shot him an odd look.

Sirius dug his hands into his pockets. "Well, this is very nice."

"Can I come in, or would you rather I just left?" James asked.

"I'm feeling remarkably mellow and generous towards my fellow men at the moment. I can't speak for Lily, though. You'd better come in and ask her."

"Hm." There was a hint of bracing himself in James's manner, but he followed Sirius into the sitting room.

"Look who's here," Sirius said to his wife.

Lily was sitting on the sofa and raised a brow when she saw their visitor. "James."

"Hullo Red." James hesitated in the middle of the room, then offered the champagne to Sirius. "Never thought I'd be doing this for you," he quipped.

"The feeling's mutual," Sirius said blandly, but he accepted the bottle.

There was a moment of uncomfortable tension, then James's shoulders seemed to drop resignedly.

"Well ... congratulations! Where is he, then?"

"What does this look like?" Lily asked, indicating the bundle in the crook of her arm, but her tone was mild.

James approached her slowly. "Trust me to hold him?"

Harry glanced at Sirius and Remus, but Sirius looked unconcerned and Remus merely had an air of scholarly interest about him.

"I know you're capable of handling children without dropping them, James," Lily said dryly, and she let him take the baby.

No one need have worried, even had they been inclined to. James was, as Lily said, more than competent with babies and he quickly soothed the anxious squeaks from Lily and Sirius's son as he was transferred from one pair of arms to another.

"Well, you're a good size," he said in a soothing tone. He smoothed tufted dark hair with gentle fingers and gave Lily a quick grin. "Pity you haven't passed on your red hair this time either, but maybe he'll get your eyes, like Harry. What are you going to call him?"

"Drusus," Sirius said.

"Good choice. He can always shorten it to Drew if he likes."

"And we're considering Godric as a second name - "

"No, we're not," Lily said firmly. James grinned.

"We're still discussing the middle name," Sirius said, unabashed. "We're not calling him Taliesin either."

"That was my grandfather's name, and I don't see what you have against it!"

"You wanted to call Harry Taliesin as well," James noted.

"It's a perfectly good Welsh name," Lily said, disgruntled.


	4. Twenty Things About James Potter (England's Quidditch Captain)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Twenty things about Ravenclaw Harry's father.

  1. James is not a good father. This isn't news to anyone, really, but it would surprise a great many people, including quite a few of his closest friends, to discover how aware James himself is of this fact. It's not something that he's at all proud of, in fact it distresses him more than his ex-wife or son in particular would believe, but he hasn't the first idea how to change it. All his efforts seem to end in failure and the harder he tries, the harder he fails.
  2. His own father died when he was a little boy. Phrasing it like this - which is how it was put to him for a number of years - borders on dishonest, however. The truth of the matter is that James's father committed suicide; and James witnessed it. Only one other person alive knows that he saw what happened, though.
  3. Which isn't an excuse for his behaviour as an adult, as he'd be the first person to admit. It's just that it does _seem_ to have an impact on the oddest things. He can't work out why that should be. Something that happened when he was seven shouldn't still be bothering him when he's a grown man.
  4. And mostly it doesn't bother him. Any of his friends will tell you that James has always been a happy-go-lucky fellow, who doesn't let the ups and downs of life trouble him. As a boy he made friends easily, never had any difficulties with his studies, was a natural at Quidditch, was made a prefect in Fifth Year and Head Boy in Seventh, and although he got up to more than his fair share of mischief over those years, he never got into any serious trouble.
  5. He just has this little problem with holding on to people.
  6. He has three close friends, Sirius, Remus and Peter. The fact that they're still his close friends probably owes a lot to the fact that they all shared a dormitory for seven years, and the three of them are accustomed to the way that, deep down, James holds everyone at arms length. In fact, it's entirely probable that Sirius and Peter don't even notice him doing it. Remus notices, but Remus isn't like other people.
  7. Then there's his ex-wife, Lily. She tried very hard to hold on to him for quite some time, but he was so determined to let go of her. Which is an irony because James loves her to desperation point and he tried very hard to hold on. It's just that in the end he couldn't help himself.
  8. Of course, when you believe that everyone important to you will leave you sooner or later, it certainly makes things a lot easier on you if you just ... push them away first.
  9. Some things don't seem entirely real to James, and that includes the people around him and some of the most significant events in his life. People like his manager, team mates and fans would be shocked to discover that James is actually very cynical about his status as the captain of the England Quidditch Team. Flying is real to him, and few things are as solid as a Snitch in the palm of his hand. The audience, however, is just background noise.
  10. Sex isn't entirely real to him either, which might explain why he never quite understood why his numerous affairs upset Lily so much. It might even explain why he had those affairs in the first place, because it certainly didn't have much to do with the looks or personalities of the women he slept with.
  11. His son is very real to him, though. (Harry would be astonished to hear it.) James remembers everything about Harry's birth, from the terror of being expected to support Lily through it (he's a little surprised himself that he managed this without fainting or otherwise disgracing himself), to the weight of the baby in his arms afterwards, the way Harry gripped his finger with an impossibly small hand, and the fact that it was probably the one and only occasion when he lost his temper with the constant media presence in his life and threatened to hex them all if they didn't leave him and his family alone. In retrospect, James regrets that he didn't do this more as Harry got older. He's well aware that the intrusiveness of the press is one of the many things that has come between him and his son over the years.
  12. The other thing that comes between them, of course, is James himself - who, yes, just can't help keeping Harry at arms length. He fights himself over this urge all the time, but somehow that internal conflict seems to spill over directly into his dealings with Harry and the poor kid ends up getting terribly mixed messages from him. One minute his father will be making grandiose plans to spend more time with him, and the next he'll be criticising his appearance, his lack of conversation, his exam results, and so on and so forth, until someone - Lily, Remus or Sirius - intervenes. James wishes that Harry would fight back himself on those occasions, though; it would be a lot easier for him to be straight with the boy if they could just air their grievances with each other and get past them. But Harry simply accepts the criticism. James thinks it must be something to do with Harry being a Ravenclaw - and he doesn't understand _that_ at all.
  13. He keeps a number of photographs of Harry at various ages in his wallet. He's been known to throw out everything from unexpired season tickets to the Magpies' games (James started out with the Montrose Magpies and remains a loyal supporter of them) to the Minister of Magic's business card when he runs out of room in his wallet, but Harry's pictures always stay in there. There are several pictures of Lily in there too, which are also never removed. That's provoked a few quarrels with other women since they divorced.
  14. The irony of James's womanising is that there's only ever been one woman for him and that's Lily. He spent a good portion of his free time during his last two years at school pursuing her, and after he left school he wasn't happy until he married her. Letting her go was, he thinks, the worst mistake of his adult life, although it's taken him over ten years to fully appreciate that fact. The _really_ stupid thing is that he devoted quite a bit of energy to making sure that no one else could have her, without realising that he could have had her back himself if only he'd put his energy into that instead. Of course, now it's too late.
  15. It did quite a number on him, mentally, to discover that she was going to marry his best mate Sirius. He didn't see that coming. And he definitely wasn't expecting to hear that they were going to have a baby - that's the first time he got drunk since his own stag-night, after hearing that piece of news. (In his favour, he doesn't usually drink. He doesn't smoke or take drugs either. There's a good reason for that.)
  16. People know that his father committed suicide; it's in most of the mini-biographies about him (the degree of sympathetic wording depends on the publication). What no one ever seems to ask is why he did it. But James made it his business to find out when he was still quite young, and an unusually straightforward Auror told him - Charlus Potter was a Seer who worked for the Department of Mysteries, and using the Sight gradually drove him insane. When James realised that he had inherited the gift - although only very slightly - he went out of his way to ensure that no one ever found out.
  17. He would be beyond horrified if he knew that not only has Harry inherited the Sight, but now he's working as a Seer for the Department of Mysteries. But of course, no one has told Harry what made his grandfather commit suicide - only James knows, and James isn't talking about it.
  18. You're probably wondering about the rumours of him having another son. They weren't true, although the press certainly made the most of the story at the time. James never bothered to confirm or deny it; he's spent so much time in the public eye that he doesn't really notice reporters anymore, let alone read what they print about him. This may work for him, but there's an unfortunate downside in that all sorts of stories about him circulate and inevitably some of them are seen and believed by people like Harry.
  19. So where does James go from here? He has a house that he barely lives in because it's too empty, an ex-wife who's nesting with his best friend, a son he doesn't know how to talk to, and a collection of former 'lovers' most of whose names he doesn't remember. He took an injury to his back during the last World Cup, something he would have brushed off without a second's thought when he was twenty, but which is threatening a premature end to his career if it doesn't heal properly soon. He has money (despite appearances, he isn't really extravagant - the only things he likes to spend money on are presents for his family and friends and the latest broomstick), but money isn't much use in the middle of the night, when you can't sleep, feel desperately alone, and daren't look in the nearest reflective surface in case you see something you don't like.
  20. Perhaps this is the turning point. Even he realises that he can't carry on like this forever - the Quidditch isn't enough anymore (and never was, if he's truly honest with himself), and despite everything, despite this warped belief that people always leave when you most need them and thus should not be allowed too close, James so desperately does _not_ want to be alone in his life. He wants to be able to hug his son and not feel him flinch away, and he wants to be able to spend time with his friends and his ex-wife without feeling that they'd rather he wasn't there. He doesn't want to be the person who makes the other guests uneasy at a gathering. Really, the one thing he wants most in life is to belong, in a very ordinary way.

If he could only work out how to do that.





	5. A Fourth Untitled Moment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone gets more than they bargained for. Continuation of one of the "Three Untitled Moments" previously posted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The trouble with the whole "Twenty Things" universe is that there's not really much of a 'core plot' to it. People sometimes ask if I'm ever going to write any more in that universe and I have to say no, because … where would I take it when I don't know what's going on myself? This fragment is an excellent illustration of the problem.

Watching the scene in the sitting room gave Harry a strange feeling, and after a moment or two he realised why – this was quite literally the first time he had ever seen his mother, father and godfather together in the same place at the same time. It was also the first time he remembered seeing his parents have a conversation that didn't hold at the very least the promise of a quarrel.

But more confusing than that, to Harry, was the strange undertone of this meeting. It was bound to be uncomfortable, of course, but there was something different about this. Lily at least was outwardly calm, but James wore a look that Harry wasn't sure he wanted to interpret, and Sirius was as unreadable as Harry had ever seen him look.

Abruptly it was too much for him. Harry mumbled an excuse to Remus and quietly backed out of the room.

It was cold in the garden, especially without his cloak, but Harry immediately felt like he could breathe properly once more. He sat on the wall and closed his eyes, performing one of the mind-clearing rituals he'd been taught by his instructors at the Ministry.

A tiny crunch of gravel alerted him a while later and when he opened his eyes, his cloak was being dangled in front of him.

"Thanks, Remus," he said gratefully.

An odd sound, half laugh half cough, greeted this and he looked up, startled, to find his father standing in front of him instead.

"I suppose I half expected that," James said wryly. "You spend more time with him than with me, after all."

Harry locked down tight on the urge to point out that Remus had always been around more. Confrontations weren't his style. He put the cloak on and reluctantly made room for his father to sit next to him.

"You all right, old son?"

"I'm fine." Harry pinned on a smile as he said it.

James looked unconvinced. "Sure about that? You didn't look all right when you skipped out on us."

Damn. "Really? Well, it was a bit hot in there. Mum's got the heating up because of the baby."

"Right." Now James looked thoroughly unsure of himself, and it was an unfamiliar emotion that didn't suit him. "What do you make of him, then?"

"Drusus?" For a moment Harry's mind went blank. He hadn't had many opportunities to think about it. "He's okay. He's a baby. I don't know much about kids."

James smiled. "Doesn't make you want to have one of your own, then?"

Harry tensed before he could stop himself. "Not really."

"Just joking. I hope you aren't planning anything like that just yet. You're a bit young."

Harry reminded himself not to say anything about the hypocrisy of this statement.

"Don't have much idea of what you _are_ up to these days," James continued awkwardly after a moment. "Sirius says you're working at the Ministry." He sounded rather incredulous of this. "Which department are you in?"

Harry wished Sirius hadn't told his father that. "The Department of Mysteries," he said reluctantly.

"Oh. You're an Unspeakable, then." A pause. "That's a conversation killer."

"Yeah," Harry mumbled.

"I always hoped you'd take up Quidditch, like me," James said, clearly trying for a light note.

"I've never really been into Quidditch," Harry said, trying to say it as tactfully as possible. That wasn't the reason at all, of course, but he didn't want to get into the real reasons why he'd never taken up the game in spite of being a good flyer.

"Yeah, I got that," James muttered.

Another painful silence in which they both looked anywhere but at each other. This was dreadful; they had _nothing_ to say to one another. Harry braced himself to suggest going back inside, which was far from being a place he wanted to be but at least would take some of the burden of conversation off him.

"Looks like we've only got the weather and personal stuff to talk about, then," James said, forging ahead a little desperately.

"Cold isn't it?" Harry said helplessly.

"Sharp wind, yeah. I reckon it'll rain later." A pause. "So, are you still footloose and fancy-free or is there a significant other I should know about?"

Harry couldn't stop a flinch. "No!"

They both froze.

"I'm sorry I asked," James said quietly, in a different voice. "Tell you what – I'll just go."

In spite of everything, the resignation and defeat in the words were like a knife through Harry's heart.

"Dad – "

But James was already gone.

When Harry dragged himself indoors again a few minutes later, Remus was in the kitchen, sipping tea from a large mug and leaning casually against the worktop. He looked gravely at Harry as the teenager closed the door behind him.

"Has he gone?" Harry asked dully.

"No – he's talking to your mother, but I expect he'll be going shortly."

"Oh."

Remus sighed and got up to close the door between the kitchen and the hallway. When he turned back to Harry, he looked reproachful.

"Harry, I know he's a bit hopeless as a father, but give him some credit. He's trying."

Harry pushed down the small voice that wanted to say it was too late for that. "Yeah, I know."

Remus sighed. "Don't give me that! This is me, remember? If you want to say that James is a berk, you're perfectly welcome to do so."

"We don't have anything to say to each other," Harry muttered. "He doesn't know anything about me."

"Mostly because you've gone out of your way to avoid telling him anything about yourself," Remus said sternly. "You can't wholly blame him for ignorance when you keep him in the dark!"

"We don't have anything in common, Remus – "

"You don't know that. And until you give him the opportunity to have something in common with you, you never will."

"It's not like I can talk to him about my job," Harry grumbled, "and it's pretty much taken over my life, so - "

"So you have a very handy excuse, it seems to me."

Harry stared at Remus, hurt, and got an affectionate but nevertheless stern look in return.

"That job of yours is starting to sound like a very bad deal to me," Remus told him bluntly. "I've seen you look stressed before, Harry, but I've never seen you as drawn and nervy as you've been for the last few months. And when were you going to tell someone that Ron had moved out and gone back to live with his parents? Managing the whole rent on that flat must be stretching your finances a bit thin on an apprentice wage."

"I can manage," Harry said.

"Correction: You'll manage if it proves the death of you! Bugger the Rule of Silences – what have those horn-brains at the Department got you doing?"

"You know I can't tell you that!"

"Perhaps you'll tell your mother, then." Silence. "Or Sirius."

"I can't tell anyone!" Harry snapped. "Merlin! Why are you nagging me?"

"Because if it's damaging your health, Harry, you _can_ tell someone and you damn well will." Remus leaned back against the worktop again, unmoved by Harry's agitation.

"It's not damaging my health!"

"That's not what Ron says."

"Not what _Ron_ – have you been talking to him behind my back?" Harry demanded. Uncharacteristically he was growing angrier by the minute.

"No," Remus said mildly. "He told me entirely of his own volition that you're going around the twist."

Harry was speechless for a moment. "Nice friend!" he said bitterly.

The kitchen door opened a crack.

"I say that sometimes," James remarked and he held an empty mug out to Remus. "Thanks for the tea, mate."

"Anytime, Prongs. Come in here a minute, will you?"

James didn't look too keen but he entered the kitchen, avoiding Harry's eyes. "What's up?"

Remus gestured towards Harry. "Your lad here. Doesn't he look a bit thin and overwrought to you?"

"Moony …."

"I'm serious. Harry's refusing to cough to what the Department has him doing, but I say it's affecting his health and he should tell someone before it gets any worse. Don't you think?"

"If he's an Unspeakable, he can't talk," James said quietly. "You know that."

"You're his _father_ ," Remus said, and there was an edge in his voice that made Harry twitch.

"That doesn't give me an automatic right to interfere - "

"If not you, then who?" Remus demanded. For the first time there was an edge of anger in his voice. "The pair of you make me tired. _Stop_ dancing around each other like two strangers, damn it. Talk to each other! I'm not a convenient messaging office that the pair of you can use so you can avoid having to deal with each other directly, and nor are Sirius and Lily."

There was a tense pause.

"There's a problem here," Remus continued after a moment, his voice still sharp. "It's more important than _your_ failings as a father, James, and your hang-ups as his son, Harry. Deal with it. Here. Now. Or I wash my hands of both of you."

"You can't say that!" Harry protested, very stressed.

"I just did, didn't I?"

"But ...."

James closed the kitchen door properly and looked across at him, his expression unreadable. "All right, Harry. What's going on?"

"There's nothing going on!" It was almost a shout.

"He's been sharing a flat with Ron Weasley since they left school," Remus told James. "Ron moved out a little while ago because he thinks Harry's going around the twist and won't face up to it."

Harry was appalled. "What the hell - you can't go around telling people stuff like that!"

"I'm not telling _people_ , I'm telling your father!" Remus snapped back. "Your other parent, Harry, remember him?"

At this Harry finally lost control of his tongue and years of barely-acknowledged resentment boiled out. "What do you mean, _my father?_ Don't you mean the bloke who stopped off to spawn me before taking off with a different Quidditch groupie every week? The bloke whose reputation made my life hell for me all through school? The bloke who treated my mum like shit for years and gave me crap at every opportunity because I wasn't a nice little carbon copy of him? The bloke who wheeled me out for the cameras when he felt like showing himself off as a family man, then forgot my birthday for three years in a row? That bloke? That _shit?_ Why the fuck should I tell _him_ anything?"

The appalled silence that met these shouted words was profound. Then, faintly in the background, the baby wailed.

The kitchen door was shoved open and Lily stood there, shocked and angry.

"Harry! What in the world has got into you?"

"Don't you touch me!" This was to James, who had reached out to him, not knowing what else to do.

"Harry - "

 _"Don't you dare touch me!"_ It was almost a shriek.

"Harry, either you calm down or I stun you and call a healer," Remus said in a level voice, but his eyes were wide with dismay.

"You don't fucking touch me, any of you!" Harry was sweating a river and shaking. "You leave me alone!"

"Not happening," James said, staring at him, aghast. "Harry, look at you! You're white, you're sweating - "

And just like that, it hit him. The room seemed to tilt sideways and his vision whited out and the Sight hit with a lance of pain that would have made him scream if he could have made his lungs work enough to draw the breath. Noise poured over him, explosions and screaming and the rushing of air, the stench of blood and rot and dirt, hot wind blasted over his face, flying dust and rubble ripped at his skin and clothes, and Harry drowned in a melange of images that swept over him so quickly that he had no time to assimilate them.

Maybe he passed out then; Harry didn't know. All he knew was that everything went black and silent for a space, and then he heard voices.

" … he's breathing, he's breathing, he's okay …"

"He's not okay! What's going on? What did you do to him?"

"… can't call a regular healer, they'll just call the Department and then we'll never get to the bottom of it …"

"I can call in a favour, get someone who doesn't work for St. Mungo's …."

"Do it - "

"Wait, I think he's coming around - Harry?"

Harry vomited up his tea and passed out for real this time.


End file.
